nk497 writes: Porn sites are five times as likely to host malware as previously thought, with 3.6% offering up a digital infection of some sort, according to a researchers who set up their very own adult sites for a new study. One reason for the high rate of malware is that the online porn industry makes use of affiliate programmes, where one site will drive traffic to another in exchange for links, cash or simply free pornographic material to use. Because such programmes don’t check who they’re doing business with, and sites use disguised links and other clandestine methods to drive people to different pages, it’s easy for criminals to abuse the system to spread malware. Researcher Gilbert Wondracek said: “They inadvertently have created an ecosystem that can easily be abused on a large scale by cyber criminals, and that’s worrying.”